roup but, if he gave me enough people, could I take
Project Grudge? All he wanted me to do was to get it straightened out
and operating; then I could go back to trying to outguess the
Russians. He threw in a few comments about the good job I'd done
straightening out other fouled-up projects. Good old "Rosy." With my
ego sufficiently inflated, I said yes.

On many later occasions, when I'd land at home in Dayton just long
enough for a clean clothes resupply, or when the telephone would ring
at 2:00A.M. to report a new "hot" sighting and wake up the baby, Mrs.
Ruppelt and I have soundly cussed my ego.

I had had the project only a few days when a minor flurry of good
UFO reports started. It wasn't supposed to happen because the day
after I'd taken over Project Grudge I'd met the ex-UFO "expert" in
the hall and he'd nearly doubled up with laughter as he said
something about getting stuck with Project Grudge. He predicted that
I wouldn't get a report until the newspapers began to play up flying
saucers again. "It's all mass hysteria," he said.

The first hysterical report of the flurry came from the Air Defense
Command. On September 23, 1951, at seven fifty-five in the morning,
two F-86's on an early patrol were approaching Long Beach,
California, coming in on the west leg of the Long Beach Radio range.
All of a sudden the flight leader called his ground controller--high
at twelve o'clock he and his wing man saw an object. It was in a
gradual turn to its left, and it wasn't another airplane. The ground
controller checked his radars but they had nothing, so the ground
controller called the leader of the F-86's back and told him to go
after the object and try to identify it. The two airplanes started to
climb.

By this time the UFO had crossed over them but it was still in a
turn and was coming back. Several times they tried to intercept, but
they could never climb up to it. Once in a while, when they'd appear
to be getting close, the UFO would lazily move out of range by
climbing slightly. All the time it kept orbiting to the left in a
big, wide circle. After about ten minutes the flight leader told the
ground controller, who had been getting a running account of the
unsuccessful intercept, that their fuel was low and that they'd have
to break off soon. They'd gotten a fairly good look at the UFO, the
flight leader told the ground controller, and it appeared to be a
silver airplane with highly swept-back wings. The cont